The remix is a curious thing. For a long time, Pa Love Machine did not understand them.
“What’s wrong with the original? It’s just the same song with some boom-boom-boom nonsense underneath it.”
Of course, this is exactly what makes a brilliant remix. Take a great tune, make it dancefloor-friendly by putting some boom-boom nonsense underneath it. Hear it at our clubnight, job done.
Of course, there are a lot of bad remixes. Some are done for such music-industry conceptual reasons, which the humble consumer could never understand, like positioning, and targeting demographics outside of the ultimate target audience. Basically trying to make an uncool act with a rubbish song who the press and radio stations hate, cool, purely by assocation, and gaining that assocation by paying a lot of money. An act who are temporarily cool can take advantage of this and cash in on their 15 seconds in the hype-sun by charging exhorbitant fees for churning out rubbish.
Remixes also make record company people think they’re doing something to help. A quite fantastic appraisal of the business of remixes can be seen here:
However, there are also some brilliant remixes out there. When genuine new talent with something to prove meets a great original song and puts a different spin on it. And some boom-boom-boom nonsense underneath. And we have two for you, enjoy.
Of the 19 (!) remixes of Lady Gaga Feat. Beyonce’s new single ‘Telephone’ doing the rounds, here is this best one:
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And here is the Yes Giantess take on a song that we may have mentioned on Love Machine before:
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Here, to ease the pain of going back to work, is Love Machine’s official Absolute Best Pop Songs Of 2009 playlist. We started with every single song released last year, and edited out everything that was non-brilliant so you’re left with 1.7 hours of solid pop goodness. Here it is, in handy Spotify form:
To be honest we weren’t sure about the new Gaga single ‘Bad Romance’ at first, but we also spent a couple of weeks going around saying that ‘Bleeding Love’ wasn’t that great before its full awesomeness kicked in, so we really can’t be trusted. On sober reflection, it is basically everything that made ‘Just Dance’ brilliant but with at least three choruses. Selfish really, when there are bands like N-Dubz who are eking out the same chorus again and again just to keep churning the singles out.
Here is another new Gaga track, which has either leaked or been made available to get bloggers excited or something, does it really matter these days? At the moment we don’t actually think it’s very good, but by the time we read this back in January 2010 we will probably have changed our minds and prefer it to Party In The USA, ridiculous as that sounds now.
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Well, what a fun time was had by all at the inaugral Love Machine on Friday. Huge thanks to everyone who came down. Some general observations:
-Cheryl was the biggest selling Girls Aloud shot
-The remix of Cheryl’s single sounded even better than we were expecting on a club PA and after 10 of the above drinks
-Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head (who were a late additon to the line-up for their first UK DJ set) have a lot of electropop remixes, including one genius robot version of ABC by the Jackson 5
-Sound of Arrows and Bright Light, Bright Light were both there and, we can only assume, thought it was the best night of their lives
-Balloons and Party Poppers are brilliant, but tying balloons is way harder than it should be
-Erasure’s A Little Respect, after 21 years, is still getting better with every listen
-The new Lady Gaga track, Bad Romance, is going to be pretty big
There is no doubt that Gaga is now in the realms of the properly huge, era-defining popstars, despite, incredibly only having been active in the UK for a year – Love Machine got a text from their Aunt last week:
“Hi is lady gaga the controversial one?”
(The answer was yes)
The last time Love Machine got a music-related text from that Aunt, it was about James Blunt. That’s the scale we are talking now.
Bad Romance, one of 8 new songs to be featured on a rerelease of her album, The Fame Monster, is certainly going to solidify her position and almost certainly expand it – it’s basically Poker Face Mk II with the Gaga heavy 4 to the floor beat, some yodelling, a rappy verse and a melodic chorus. Well done Ms Gaga.
Huge thanks to everyone who came down on Friday – details of the next one to come very soon……..
Eminem: “What has happened to my career. First Bruno’s arse in my face, now I’m stood next to a woman with a dress made from a tablecloth over her face and a hat made of crepe paper. Somebody help me. Please. Why didn’t Kanye run onstage to save me? Or any other superstar rapper/producer for that matter, although I can’t think of any at the moment…..”
Gaga: “You forgot about Dre”
Eminem: “Bugger, always doing that”
Gaga: “That’s nothing, I forgot to make any eye holes. What an oversight. Or rather, undersight I suppose. Can you give me a hand offstage, I can’t see the way”
Eminem: “This never happened with Dido”
Gaga: “Oh I can’t Stan her. Ahahahaha. Stan? Stand? Dido? Stan? Geddit?
Eninem: “If you make another joke like that I’m gonna punch you”
American Lady on left: “Maybe you should just poke her face.”
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